Torrents of Rain
by zorieo
Summary: The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. These are: (1) The Moral Law;(2) Heaven;(3) Earth;(4)The Commander;(5) Method and discipline. War, whether psychological, physical, etc., is not something you avoid- ever. You must simply prepare. (RnR please)
1. Chapter 1

There was something about him that no one could ever really understand, a certain charm

All they could understand was the fact that they were inexplicably drawn to him- they wanted to watch the way he glided across the floor, hummed himself intently as he worked, watch his svelte body move, stare into his emerald eyes, and listen to his lilting voice.

He was beautiful, lovely, and anything but on the inside.

His skin was soft, his skin was clean, and so who cared about what was underneath?

Except for her.

But for now, let's focus on the minorities that have a tendency to influence the big players.


	2. Chapter 2

Tyler had always thought of memories as being like framed photographs on a shelf. Most of them were placed in the sun and faded over time. Sometimes the colour faded, leaving only a vague sense of the time; the outlines of a memory that changed a little with retelling. Sometimes it was the outlines that faded so the colour remained in bright, vivid blurs – a real sense of the time but no details.

Other memories were placed in the dark, overlaid by shadows. It was these memories – the ones you wanted to forget – that didn't lose their colour or potency over time.

For Tyler, the most faded of the shadow-memories was his memory of That Night. That Night had repercussions that sent vibrations that echoed and changed events for the rest of his life. This memory - the one he most wanted to remember and be aware of what actually happened - was the one that would always evade him.

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What Tyler always remembered about his mother, long after the other memories had faded and grown dull, was her love of the moonlight. As the mistress for their local apothecary, her job often required for her to venture out at night to collect ingredients. On these nights, when the sky was clear and the moon hung full-bellied and saturated with light, she would creep into Tyler's room without bothering to turn on the lights. Wrapping his outdoor jumper over his pajamas and pressing his little feet into his shoes, she would take his hand and lead him out of the house, through the garden gate and into the thick woodland that backed onto their cottage.

As she worked, Astra would sing the songs of her childhood while Tyler capered wildly at her side, joining in with his high childish soprano, and watching his moonshadow as it flickered and leapt among the darker shadows of the trees.

Tyler knew that magic existed – he had listened to the fairy tales after all, but the sight of the silver-blue moonshadows and the haunting sound of his mother's voice seemed to weave a different kind of magic in the forest. It was less certain, but more tangible. Electric and wild and at the same time safe and private.

Tyler's father never joined them in their escapades. Those moonlit nights were a thing that had belonged between the two of them and no one else was allowed to intrude. Tyler, being so young at the time, hadn't realized how much his father resented the fact that his wild, unpredictable wife loved her son so much more than anyone else in the world. David worshipped the ground she walked on and Astra, in turn, regarded him with affectionate tolerance.

And so he would watch darkly from the bedroom window as the two little figures danced hand in hand into the forest, snatches of songs fading in their wake.

" _Memory, all alone in the moonlight, has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone…"_

" _Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars! Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars…_

 _"What a marvelous night for a moondance, with the stars up above in your eyes…"_

And most often, as they emerged from the forest again, hands clasped, eyes bright, choking on joy and wild magic as Tyler's mother picked him up and whirled him above her head:

" _I'm being followed by a moonshadow! Moonshadow, moonshadow! Leaping and a hopping on a moonshadow, moonshadow moonshadow!_

 _And if I ever lose my hands, lose my plough, lose my lands. Yes, if I ever lose my hands, hey – I won't have to work no more…"_

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It was perhaps no surprise, then, that on the night that David came home from his work in with the news that the serial killer, Jacob Goldstein, had escaped from the secure ward for the criminally insane, that Tyler had turned to the moonlight for comfort.

On That Night – the night when everything changed in a rush of violence and blood and moonshadows, Tyler crept out of bed on small, nightmare-trembly feet and down to hall to his parents' room in search of his mother to comfort him. He stopped when he heard the sound of arguing inside. He had never heard his parents arguing before. His father hated upsetting his mother and she was usually too lost in her own world to pay enough attention to an argument for it to become very heated.

Tyler crept up to the door and pressed his ear against the wood.

"…Can't go in there now. Even for ingredients. Who knows where he is?" David was saying. "I can order them for you from work."

"But I _like_ getting my own ingredients," Astra protested, her voice pleading, "It's the whole reason I became an apothecary mistress in the first place! How long until they catch him?"

"I don't _know!_ " David snapped back. "If we knew where he bloody well was, don't you think we'd have caught him by now? He blames _me_ for putting him in there, because I was the one who caught him. He wants revenge on _me_ and he's insane. Do you think I could live with myself if he attacked you to get to me?"

"It's not _fair_!"

"I don't _care_! You're _not_ going out there, Astra, and that's final!"

Tyler, pulled away, a strange squirmy feeling in his belly that made him want to be sick. He didn't understand what they were talking about and he didn't dare interrupt them. As he crept back down the hall towards his room, he passed the hall window. The full moon hung close and heavy in the sky, casting a brilliant square moonbeam through the glass to bleach the wooden floor.

Tyler felt a sudden rush of desire for songs and the moonshadows. He needed to feel that cold silver light on his head to help him forget the sounds of his parents' anger and the wriggling in his belly.

He crept downstairs and stood on tiptoe to draw the bolt on the back door. He opened it as quietly as he could and padded out into the back garden. He wasn't stupid, and knew he shouldn't go into the forest on his own, so he settled for shuffling through the thick cool grass of their lawn, murmuring softly to himself; " _I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow moonshadow. And if I ever lose my legs, I won't moan and I won't beg. Yes if I ever lose my legs. Hey – I won't have to walk no more…"_

He lay back in the thick grass and stared up at the full moon. Apart from his mother the full moon was the prettiest thing he had ever seen. She looked so solid – as though there was no way she should have been able to stay up in the sky without a string, and its pale glow seemed to come from another world. Under its round-bellied gaze, Tyler felt the last shreds of his fear dissolve and disappear.

The silence was broken by a rustling in the hedgerow at the edge of the garden. Tyler sat up and turned to stare at it, his heart beating wildly. All of a sudden he wasn't so sure he should be out here on his own. Who knew what kind of horrible creatures came out at night when his mother wasn't there to keep them away?

Frozen with fear, he stared hard at the bush that had rustled, and jumped when it moved again. Suddenly, two twin orbs of glimmering yellow-gold appeared in the shadows beside the bush. It was a moment before Tyler realized they were eyes.

Spurred into action by his terror, Tyler leaped to his feet and turned to run back towards the cottage as fast as his short legs could carry him. He wished more than anything that he had not come so far down their long garden. There was a soft thud behind him as the creature leapt from the cover of the bush and took off after him. He could hear the rhythmic thump at the footsteps grew closer to him and he glanced over his shoulder.

The sight made him stumble, trip, crash to the ground. The creature was huge – _a wolf_ , his mind screamed, throwing up images of the monsters in the fairytales his mother read to him at night. He screamed as it leaped at him, landing on his chest and knocking the air out of him. Tears of pain blurred the image of the wolf as it lunged at him with open jaws. Tyler managed to scream a second time as he felt teeth sink into his shoulder and chest. The pain ripped white-hot and jagged through his whole body.

" _TYLER!_ "

He felt the weight lifted as the wolf was flung off his chest. It flew through the air to land a few feet away. Panting and sobbing, Tyler turned his head to see a figure with flyaway blonde hair place herself between him and the wolf. His mother raised her stick, but she wasn't quick enough. The wolf rolled and leapt again, this time landing on Astra and bearing her to the ground.

"Mum…" Tyler had meant to scream the word, but he could barely breathe from the pain, let alone talk. He watched paralyzed and horror stricken as those bloody white teeth lunged at her neck and ripped again and again.

" _Oh God! ASTRA_ "

For the second time that night, the wolf was flung into the air. This time Tyler saw his father standing there in his pajama bottoms. Even with his vision blurred with pain and blood loss, he noticed that David stood between his wife and the wolf, leaving his son open to another attack.

A loud crack came from David's rifle towards the wolf who managed to leap out of the way in time. It hesitated for a moment, then as David raised his gun again, turned to lope back into the forest. David took off after him, his body crackling with malice and rage.

Tyler turned again to look towards his mother. She was covered in blood. He had never seen so much blood. It looked thick and black in the moonlight. He rolled onto his stomach and the pain lanced through him. He whimpered quietly.

"Ty…ler?"

Her voice was so weak. He had never heard her sound weak before.

"Tyl…ler, my …baby?"

Her words were broken with shudders. Tyler used all his strength to pull himself towards her. The pain was so terrible it seemed like a whole separate part of him now. After what seemed like a century, he reached her and peered down. To his horror he could see bone, tendon and muscle, torn and bloody at her throat.

"Live T…Tyler." Astra managed. "Promise me? Don't…let them H-Her you into a m-monster like him. The w-wolf a-and the Moon haven't changed you. Say it Tyler!"

"W-wolf or Moon haven't ch-changed me," Tyler repeated tearfully, unable to look at her eyes, only at the gash in her neck.

"G-good boy. R-rememb-b-ber that."

She was getting fuzzy round the edges. Tyler thought she might be saying something else, but he couldn't hear anymore. His head was filled with a fizzing sound that made it too heavy for his neck. It flopped forward into the blood-soaked grass by his mother's shoulder and he felt himself sucked backwards into unconsciousness.

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After That Night, Tyler woke up in the hospital with his father puffed eyed and glaring at him. Blaming him for wanting comfort in the moonlight. He was so confused, if he was hurt, then why was his father here, and not his mother?

Then, it came back.

With the sudden influx of memories, came a river of tears that never seemed to end- even after days of being out of the hospital and days of his father drinking himself away.

He needed his father's strength, and here he was drinking and wasting himself- so, Tyler grew angry. Until, one day, Tyler got the courage to tell his dad what he thought,

This was the first, but definitely not the last, time that Tyler's father beat him into unconsciousness.

There was something strange about the way he did it, Tyler observed after the fourth or fifth time (he could never remember to count). The whip that his father used left burns- yet the tip was silver.

Oh well.

And so life went on in the unstable household and Tyler, eventually, grew up and moved out.

But one thing never changed- the blood and Moonlight,

Despite what wanting comfort from the Moonlight did to him, his mother, and his father, he could never blame Her. Y'know the Moon.

She was the one to comfort him- Her cold, and fragile beams caressed his face- even when he couldn't see them. They gave him strength.

He didn't know what caused it, but as the Moon waned and waxed, he could feel Her. He never needed to be told what stage She was in; She tugged at the very marrow of his bones; calling to him, begging for a partner to join Her on Her pedestal in sky.

Maybe She was the one he was sacrificing to.

Did he mention it? Yes, every month, as he and his mother galloped and pranced and sang throughout the forest- they sacrificed a small amount of blood to Her. Because she was the one who ruled their existence- who they relied on and worshipped.

While such rituals were somewhat hard to accomplish behind his now apartment building without his neighbors calling the men in white -again- Tyler learned to keep his ritual small while simply sacrificing more blood to appease Her.

It wasn't the same- but it worked.

This also meant very little friends. Tyler was already unpopular and somewhat isolated growing up due to the unusual circumstances his mother died under, his quietness, and the sheer cruelty of children.

If they didn't understand something- the simply ignored it or worked relentlessly at it- in his case, they relentlessly hit him.

And so it was a cycle, he went to school and was beaten, came home and was beaten- tragic really.

While the beatings didn't carry into adulthood as his bullies could now be arrested for such a thing, now, he was simply isolated.

And a cruel cycle began once more; sleep, go to the coffee shop, go home, repeat.

The thing with cycles- especially the anthropogenic ones- is that they will always be broken. It is inevitable and unstoppable- no matter what breaks them.

For Tyler- it was eyes.

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Eyes.

Tyler could feel someone watching him as he bustled around the machines, mixing and finishing people's drinks. He had always been like- it was a sense that he developed to know which bullies were coming for him that day.

But these eyes were different. They were calculating, as if they were trying to figure out what made Tyler ticked- and it unnerved him because all he had ever known was violence.

Whatever, he thought, they wouldn't find anything interesting anyway.

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The sun that beamed through flimsily drawn together curtains was what was annoying Tyler the most right now.

Then, it was that ever increasingly loud alarm he bought last month and the sound of neighbor's child watching cartoons loudly. Finally, it was the couple that seemed to be perpetually having sex in the apartment above his- and in 3...2...1... the woman would reach a loud and fake orgasm.

Ugh... mornings

Tyler tried to roll over off the left side of the bed- and hit a wall before he remembered that this wasn't his old apartment.

Of course there was a miniature panic attack between his mind remembering that and him rolling out of bed.

( _Where the hell am I?_

Confusion chased away the lingering sleep, his mind struggling to clear as Tyler continued to groggily stare at the unfamiliar room, sitting up in the unfamiliar bed. This is super, he thought, waking up in a stranger's apartment—never done _that_ before; guess there's a first time for _everything_.

Maybe, just maybe Tyler thought, he went out and for some reason decided to get blithering drunk and threw his virginity at someone. That was _totally_ possible, he thought sarcastically, because he _totally_ drank.

Awkwardly, he shoved the black sheets off himself and froze, staring down at himself, _at the pajamas he didn't own_ , in a state of choking terror. Tyler's stomach flipped and twisted, panic flooding.

 _Someone had dressed him_!

Someone—someone took him out of his _clothes_ and put him in _pajamas_!

Tyler swallowed the scream that was building in his throat, and slammed his eyes shut. Calm down, he thought. _Calm down, calm down, calm down_. It was okay, he comforted himself, it was _okay_. Shakily, Tyler peeled his eyes open, trying to control his breathing as his heart slammed against his ribcage painfully.

C'mon, the boy thought, friggin' calm down. It's fine. Totally, completely, one hundred percent _okay_. He just needed to keep calm, had to keep calm… Otherwise… _otherwise_ panicking and thinking irrationally might get him killed. Just… Creep out of the room, find a phone, call for help.

Okay. Yeah. Sounded logical. Sounded good.

Was he kidnapped?

What had he done last night?

He had been in his apartment. Right? Yeah. Tyler had been in his apartment and… he was alone. And he was watching some TV show.

 _And then nothing_.

Blank.

He couldn't _remember_.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Had he been…? Kidnapped? Chloroformed? _Drugged_?

Tyler sucked in a shaky breath and glanced around the room quickly. It looked like a fairly average room (and not at all like some creepy kidnapper's dungeon of despair). Pale blue walls with various posters of bands that he _liked_ , and some lights that hung on the wall above the _Dexter's Laboratory_ themed bed, which was pushed into the corner of room. There was a white closet a few feet from the bed with a tall dresser next to it, and a white dresser up against the wall across from the bed and in between two doors.

Nausea crept up, horror twisting in the boy's stomach painfully. This room was designed for _him_. It was everything he would have ever wanted, something his father would never allowed because of how _childish_ it was. Tyler was _obsessed_ with Dexter's Laboratory. And he was _in_ Dexter's Laboratory pajamas!

No. No, no, no. This wasn't designed for him. That's _crazy_.

Someone's obsessed with him and kidnapped him!

Oh wait, this was his apartment….)

And, with that small change in routine, Tyler got ready for his ever-so-monotonously-the-same day and went to work.

There was something about being a barista that was so comforting.

His boss, like almost everyone else in his life was a complete and utter dick and so were his coworkers.

With them constantly missing their shifts and his boss always gone on leave, Tyler worked at least 9 hours per day in what was supposed to be a 3 hour shift at Café de la Crème.

So, once you work in a place about 36 hours per work, you either hate or acclimate yourself and begin to love it (Tyler had a tendency to love things more often them not, one trait he proudly kept from his mother's memory and another reason for his father to beat him, "for being too much like the woman you murdered").

As Tyler walked down the familiar path to his job, he had to sigh in irritation as he felt eyes again.

Would this person just goddamn approach him and get it over with already?

The bells jingled as Tyler opened the door and once again as his co-worker threw an apron at him and yelled, "Peace!"

Bitch.

Tyler hurried to put his apron on and begin serving the somewhat empty coffee shop. As he started to clean the machines that his bitchy coworker didn't even have the decency to clean, he felt the eyes again.

Except this time, they were approaching him.

As bullies and stalkers are (both in works of fiction and life) generally quite ugly, Tyler was struck speechless by the sight as Adonis.

Hot damn, he was a beautiful motherfucker.

Which actually kind of sucked because at least if you were going to be verbally and physically abused by someone, they better be ugly, because then you could at least make fun of them.

Whatever.

With a quick scan up and down, Tyler could see that his stalker didn't just keep his face beautiful, and the boy could only wolf-whistle in his mind at the stranger's fashionable sense.

"Hi, I'm Dorian"

 **AN:/ I don't even know where the fuck I'm going with this story.**

 **Please! Tell me what you think! After my first failure of a story, I started on a completely different track. Soooo, I am posting this first chapter (plus the intro) of this story story and another piece to see how it goes.**

 **ATM OUT!**


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